curi·ous {Old French curios} Drawn to investigate, prick up the ears, ponder for the sake of pondering. Enticed by mysteriously labeled bottles.
vo·luptu·ary {Late Latin volupturius} A lass devoted to the pursuit of pleasure. An unabashed epicurean, hedonist, libertine, sensualist, lotus-eater.
Our hosts in Andalusia were an old friend of Alfonso and his wife, who is native to Cadiz, of the town Sanlucar de Barrameda. Upon our arrival we were thus treated to a party of adults and kids, a reunion of sorts for the high school girlfriends of our host and their menfolk and children.
Much [...]
Le pâle squelette/De mes amourettes/Joue des castagnettes…
(The pale skeleton/Of my little loves/Plays castanets…)
[...]
The comparison was already floating through my mind, of Amsterdam with San Francisco. The cafes, the bohos, the acceptance of people as they are–and a certain air of self-acceptance that comes from living in a Mecca of so-called tolerance.
And, so I had read, Amsterdam even has it’s own refurbished Deco movie house, Pathé Tuschinski.
Then [...]
Alfonso dismissed it as anti-Enlightenment flim-flam. Though I had to agree, the ossuary–located about an hour south of Prague in a suburb of Kutna Hora called Sedlec–was also intriguing.
A chandelier made of (at least) one of every bone in the human body is something to see in my book.
Here is how it [...]
Like Ali is an Alps Slut, I am an Art Nouveau Slut, which means I spent our short time in Prague (Praha) with my head craned upward and mouth dangling open in rapture. The city looks as though it was designed by Alfons Mucha, in part because it was.
The streets are clusters of buildings [...]
Was a time when visits precipitated calling cards, a hand fan pressed to the lips spoke: You may kiss me, and there was a taxidermist in every hamlet, no matter how small. I’m speaking of course of the Victorian era.
Besides well-mannered guests, the well-appointed Victorian parlour would likely be stuffed with all manner of natural [...]
Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence. And though admittedly such a thing never happened, it is still conceivable that someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence certainly never. Franz Kafka, 1917
I had learned through the little research I did before leaving [...]
“…the truth I am seeking lies not in the cup, but in myself.”
~ Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way
guest artist: Selena Kimball.
I am of the opinion that the path to ecstasy is generally paved with something less than ecstatic, much of which is memory-based. In my world view, memory is a key to essential truths and transcendent [...]
The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it,
can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the Universe to do.
~Galileo Galilei (Heliocentric extraordinaire)
Florence is known as a city of art–as well it should be–but the underpainting of the city is science, specifically the Medici science [...]
I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine.
I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes.
I lived on honeycomb.
~Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
I have been writing a character I call My Neptuna. The work is going slowly this week, lots of resistance, and so today I thought, if my mind [...]